VIDEO: Co-Writer J.D. Payne on ‘Star Trek 3’

Following his two recent print interviews, a new video interview has surfaced featuring Star Trek 3 co-writer J.D. Payne talking about working with Bad Robot, pitching story ideas to J.J. Abrams, and landing the job for the next Trek film. While the entire interview lasts more than an hour, we’ve extracted the relevant seven minutes covering the upcoming movie.

Yep, I am cautiously optimistic to be sure, but I do hope they return to what Trek should be about which from Mr. Payne’s comments at least, he seems to understand. Hopefully, the significant amount of posts by Trek fans decrying STID’s almost complete lack of anything that would be considered as Trek’s core (no pun intended to treckcore.com 🙂 ) are having some impact…

I personally loved the recent quote posted by a very famous TOS writer (who shall remain nameless) on how to end the next movie. To paraphrase:

Kirk wakes up in bed with Bob Newhart. He turns to Mr. Newhart and says, “Bob, I just had the most horrific dream!”

Indeed…the perfect quote…had me ROFLMAO 🙂 …

whbinder

Perhaps this isn’t place for debate, but I admit to being confused by many posts. Some people may like or dislike ID and that’s of course their business. To say it isn’t true to Trek is an odd statement. The common thought is that the old stories were about commenting on society and the new films are about explosions.

Certainly Into Darkness added explosions. But those explosions didn’t replace the social commentary, merely co-existed with it. In light of the Boston Bombing, Jodi Arias, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed we treat justice very differently than in decades past. So much crying for blood and torture. CNN showed a woman on the street actually screaming how she hoped Arias would burn in Hell. Wow. That seems like the kind of thing Star Trek is ripe for, to step in and say “Whoah. That’s not who we are. We’re beyond that.”

I didn’t go into the film thinking about those things, but I certainly came out thinking about them. It kind of made my gut hurt. The film was right. The world isn’t moving towards Gene’s vision when we’re so bent on revenge. Kirk’s initial knee-jerk reaction was relatable and understandable. And hey, we’re movie-goeers. We love to see the bad guy get ‘sploded. But Kirk took the time to calm himself and actually defend the villain’s right to trial. The original Khan? Kruge? Sybok? Chang? Lursa? Soran? Borg Queen? Ru’afu? Nero? They got destroyed violently. Khan? Put on trial. That was a revelation to me.

Even the Prime Directive. It was central to the original show when we were invading foreign countries to bring them our way of thinking and doing terrible harm. In TNG and beyond, it came up now and again – as a story point. Because it wasn’t really as necessary to talk about, but Prime Directive was back in center stage in the film when our country is back in that same situation.

So at least to one person, Star Trek Into Darkness very much brought back what has been missing from Trek for a long time, a fairly unflinching mirror on our society today and an unpleasant look at what we are, reminding us that we can do better.

But on this we agree Kevin, I hope the new writers go even further and boldly go.

Jon

Glad we can agree to disagree :). It sure is fascinating (to coin a phrase 🙂 ) when 2 people can see a movie…really any movie…is such a differing light. I got virtually nil out of STID in terms or moral conundrums or current event allegories…the business trying to tie the Khan and family torpedoes into the current drone debate was barely touched on for more than a heartbeat until the next explosion came along (complete with lens flares of course).

In my opinion and compared to such good to great Trek movies as TWOK (which STID of course blatantly ripped off in certain scenes that failed utterly to elicit any emotional connection whatsoever…Spock’s “Khan!” yell brought forth all manner of derisive laughter from the audience while I was stewing in my seat with the growing realization that I had paid for this debacle…my wife had the good smarts to walk out previously), TVH, TUC, and even TMP that melded social commentary into the plotline with far greater skill and aplomb, STID was an abject, dismal failure.

As time goes on, STID will not likely be fondly remembered and will take its place alongside the other not-so-good to bad ST movies who can now thank STID since STV in particular can finally be lifted out of the bottom of the proverbial barrel…

And as much as I love Trek and its lofty ideals, I am first in line for folks like the Boston bomber getting the death penalty. Sadly, evil exists as part of the human condition, and either we respond in kind, or we don’t and evil grows ever stronger. The problem with the latter is that it inevitably leads to more of the same, usually to an even higher degree.

I guess I am a bit older now which no doubt has tempered my idealism. So be it…Or maybe now that I have an amazing young son as part of my life, I realize that if anyone were to ever deliberately harm him in any way whatsoever, I am quite certain I would want that that person be visited by the Grim Reaper ASAP…

I’m glad some folks enjoyed STID and I don’t begrudge them their opinions, but I just cannot stay silent when I see something so dear to me being so badly mistreated…STID is literally the “Batman and Robin” movie moment for the franchise (another film that almost destroyed the entire Batman genre altogether until a total reboot was brought to life some 8 years after letting enough people forget how bad B&R was…).

All of the above is MHO of course. No problem at all if y’all disagree 🙂 …

BeatleJWOL

You’re not wrong about some of the good bits about STID, and the innate Trekness of the ideas

The trouble is they’re wrapped up in all the rehashing hackery going on around them; maybe now that a) it’s out of their system and b) Damon “I LOST all the answers” Hackelof is out of the picture, Bob Orci can guide these newbies into creating an amazing Trek film that improves on ’09.

kadajawi

I wholeheartedly agree. There are things that went wrong with ID, most notably that they tried to put in too much TWOK into it. Couldn’t they have John Harrison be John Harrison? Another passenger of the Botany Bay who was woken up instead of Khan? Couldn’t they have explained his blood a bit more? i.e. it’s not magic blood, but since he is genetically enhanced, he has some white cells that can fight radiation sickness… basically he has the equivalent of nanoprobes, and that’s what is healing Kirk.

But I digress. ID is both thought provoking (even if it doesn’t leave you enough time to start thinking right away) and very entertaining. I liked it a lot, and my favorite Star Trek movie is TMP!

James

Excellent post.

The movie acts as a metaphor for America’s descent into moral ambiguity following the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The hunt for John Harrison is analagous to the search for Bin Laden and the debate about whether to launch photon torpedoes at the Klingon home world is relevant to current debatesregarding the morality of drone strikes.The film concludes with Kirk realising that he lost perspective following the terrorist attack on Starfleet. He then rededicates himself to science and peaceful exploration and begins the famous five year mission, to explore strange new worlds and to seek out new life. The title “Into Darkness” refers to the moral state of American foreign policy following 9/11 (fear, vengeance, anger, and violence) and the final scenes state that it’s time row back from this.Star Trek Into Darkness opens with Kirk debating on whether to violate the prime directive in order to rescue Spock whose life hangs inthe balance as he tries to save an entire civilisation from an erupting volcano. Roddenberry would be proud of these aspects of the film.

I am real happy to now be participating on Trekcore. This is my new Trek fan home. Some of you may remember me as a regular poster for years on Trekmovie.com. I got a little carried way with my behavior on that site, and got kicked off. I won’t make excuses on what happened; and if I was the moderator on Trekmovie, I would have kicked me off the site as well. I am turning over a new leaf here, and am getting back to my personal IDIC principles which I let slip over on Trekmovie…and I want to discuss Star Trek in a positive way again, and am looking forward to participating with all the other fans here as we get all the stories as the buildup continues to Trek 3 in 2016.

I am very encouraged by Payne’s words here on Trek 3. I think that they may have hit a home run with the guy!

I hope to bring my uncannily correct predictions and deduction to this site over the next two years concerning Trek 3. I predicted Khan as the villain, based on some very minor clues, over 2 years in advance of STID.

So, I’m really excited to becoming now a regular poster here on Trekcore..